"Take the gun away," I said softly. "Step back. Call your watch commander. Tell him you made a severe procedural error during a routine traffic stop. Do it now, and you survive tonight."
I felt the pressure against my spine lessen. Slowly, reluctantly, his fingers uncurled from my wrist. He took one step back, then another, his boots crunching loudly on the broken safety glass covering the wet asphalt. I didn't turn around. I kept my hand flat against the freezing roof of the car, breathing through the sharp, lingering ache in my shoulder.
"Get back in the car," he said, his voice trembling so violently he could barely form the words. He was no longer giving an order; he was desperately pleading.
I turned to face him. He had holstered his weapon, but his hands were shaking as he backed toward his cruiser. He looked like a man who had just woken up halfway through a fatal freefall, realizing he had no parachute.
"My vehicle is heavily damaged, and the cabin is exposed to the elements," I stated, pulling my cell phone from my coat pocket. The screen lit up in the darkness, showing a confirmed, active connection to my team. "I require you to dispatch a tow unit and a state police supervisor to this exact location."
"I'll... I'll let you go with a warning," he stammered, holding up his hands. He was rapidly backpedaling now, his previous arrogance entirely erased by overwhelming dread. "You're free to go. We don't need to do all this. You can just drive away. I won't write the citation. We're good here."
He was pathetic, but the danger hadn't entirely passed. He still thought he could sweep the broken glass off the board and pretend the game hadn't happened. He didn't understand the vast, unforgiving machinery he had just thrown himself into.
"I am not leaving this location, Deputy," I said, tapping the screen of my phone to initiate a direct dial to the state police barracks. "And you no longer have the authority to issue warnings."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"Copy you, Investigator Marcus. Verifying credentials..." The dispatcher paused, the sound of rapid typing bleeding through the line. "Credentials verified. Priority dispatch initiated. Two State Police units are en route from the regional barracks. ETA is fourteen minutes. Are you currently secured?"
"I am standing outside a heavily damaged vehicle," I replied, keeping my eyes locked on the deputy. "The aggressor is standing down, but the scene is not secure."
"Keep the line open, Investigator."
I lowered the phone but kept the screen illuminated.
Deputy Hayes—I had read his nameplate when he was pressing his Glock into my spine—was unraveling. He backed away from me, his heavy boots splashing through the freezing puddles on the shoulder. He reached his cruiser, yanked the driver’s side door open, and dove inside. A second later, the blinding red and blue strobe lights cutting through the forest darkness abruptly snapped off. The sudden absence of light plunged the highway into a deep, disorienting blackness, illuminated only by the Bentley’s shattered headlights and the soft, pulsing green LED on my ruined dashboard.
He was trying to erase the scene.
I watched his silhouette moving frantically inside the cab of his cruiser. He was reaching up toward the rearview mirror, tearing at the mounting bracket of his dashcam. He didn't understand the redundancy of federal oversight. He thought if he killed his local hard drive and shut off his GPS transponder, he could build a new narrative in the dark. He was about to learn that the system he was trying to dismantle was already infinitely larger than his jurisdiction.
The icy rain soaked completely through my wool coat, chilling my skin and stiffening my joints. My left shoulder throbbed with a hot, sickening ache where he had wrenched it out of its natural socket, but I refused to lean against the car. I stood perfectly straight on the gravel shoulder, the federal portfolio resting safely inside the illuminated glovebox, waiting.
Five minutes passed. The wail of sirens began to echo through the dense pines, bouncing off the mountainous terrain.
But the headlights that suddenly rounded the bend from the south weren't the crisp white LEDs of the State Police. They were the heavy, yellowish halogen beams of two local county sheriff’s SUVs.
They arrived with no sirens and no lightbars activated. They pulled up aggressively, boxing in the Bentley from the front and the rear. Four officers stepped out into the downpour.
The man who took the lead didn't wear a standard patrol uniform. He wore a heavy tactical raincoat with golden supervisor bars pinned to the collar. He was built like a heavy-duty engine block, his jaw square and set with years of unchallenged local authority. This was the Watch Commander.
He didn't approach me. He walked directly to Hayes’s cruiser. He opened the door, leaned inside, and spoke to his panicked deputy for exactly thirty seconds. I couldn't hear the words over the rain, but I saw the supervisor reach out and physically slap Hayes’s hand away from the radio console. Then, the supervisor tapped his own chest—right where his body camera was mounted. He was ensuring it was powered down.